Poll: Just three percent have favorable view of John Edwards

AP Photo/Gerry Broome

CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

(CBS News) With opening arguments in the trial of former U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards set to begin on on Monday, a CBS News/New York Times poll shows that public opinion of him has plummeted since he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007. Now, he is now most known for cheating on his wife.

The CBS/NYT poll reveals that only 3 percent of those polled hold a favorable view of Edwards, who has been charged with misusing campaign funds. That is down from 30 percent in 2007 when he was running for the Democratic nomination, which is also the last time the question was asked among registered voters.

Since 2007, Edwards' unfavorable ratings have risen eleven points, from 30 percent to 41 percent today. However, half of those polled are undecided or don't have an opinion of Edwards.

Women, however, especially dislike Edwards, with just 2 percent holding a favorable view of him compared to 45 percent who view him unfavorably.

Complete CBS News/New York Times poll results: John Edwards (pdf)

The poll asked Americans what was the first thing that came to mind when they heard the name John Edwards, other than him running for president. Cheating on his wife is the first association that thirty percent of those polled have when they think of Edwards, who had an affair - and a child - with Rielle Hunter while married to long-time wife Elizabeth Edwards. However, more people - 39 percent - were unable to associate Edwards with anything, which provides insight into another finding: most Americans know nothing or very little about his upcoming trial.

Furthermore, more than half of those polled said they didn't know why Edwards was on trial and 52 percent don't know if he did anything wrong. Twenty-four percent of those polled say his actions were unethical while 11 percent say his actions were illegal.

Edwards lawyers to follow trail of 'Bunny money'

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This poll was conducted by telephone from April 13-17, 2012 among 957 adults nationwide.

Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups may be higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

[benskott114]

Remember when Dan Rather torpedoed his own career pushing fake documents about Bush to try to get this scumbag Edwards elected to the Vice Presidency?

I think that alone says a lot about the moral standards at CBS.

[bfrank531]

Why is CBS spending money polling John Edwards?

[SpiderBkk]

Hmmm. . . Had Edwards won his party's nomination and went on to win the presidency, do you think any of this would have come to light? Absolutely not. Just as Obama's radical socialist past and criminal fraud vis-a-vis forged documents has been buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa.

[StoryKeeper1]

John Edwards is the lowest of the low, which being a former front-runner for the dem ticket for both President and the VP, still doesn't say too much. The fact that so few remember him is also not surprising given the short attention span of most liberals. I grew to dislike him before all of this when he was making millions as a mal-practice trail attorney utilizing 'junk-science' to win his cases and cause many a good doctor to leave the practice and drive up the cost of medical care in our country,,,but in the final analysis he is simply par for the course in democrat circles.

[SeattleMark952]

Why is this news? I imagine there are serial killers that would poll better than John Edwards.

[FordGalaxie]

Which shows that the majority of the population in this country is stupid, ignorant and out of touch with what goes on in the world. This is why you have fringe village idiots such as Palin seen as having credibility. As George Carlin once said, "If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders."

[Lucky12345678]

My only question would be, who are those 3%!

[rockychance]

CARPETBAGGERS is a term that southerners used for a long time to describe northerners who came south trying to take financial advantage of southern people. Now, we have our own southerners like Edwards, Gore, Clinton who have run around the country for decades taking advantage of anyone that they could deceive politically. We are not proud of these men. Maybe up north or out west they like these clowns but not down south.

[mostlyindignant]

Not sure that this north south thing is especially relevant..

[RealiteBites]

Well, I'm one of the 97%. But gosh, with numbers like that, you'd think he was somebody REALLY awful like Newt Gingrich :p

Basically, Edwards had an affair, just like so many other politicians. But the fallout just turned out to be super horrible for Elisabeth - she finds out while she was dying of cancer that her husband cheated on her and fathered a love child with a total flake ... from the National Enquirer! What a way to have to spend one's final days, you know?

If Edwards had just had an affair without fathering a child, or if Elisabeth hadn't been dying, he wouldn't have been all that different from so many other politicians :/

[Nikeforpresident]

What relevance does John Edwards have to anything now? This is an example of nitwit polling. It means nothing.